Save Your Media! - How to create a diligent backup system for your office
Running a production company bestows upon me the responsibility of learning a proper backup workflow. If you ever lose your media, that’s all those years of work you have put together, not to mention potentially the work of your clients too. I’ve had it happen before, hard drives WILL fail over time. So why not set up a proper backup system when you HAVE time, and let that take care of your priceless media. :)
Basic User:
(or whatever size your computer HD is)
Optional: Western Digital 1TB Passport
(A second backup you can leave at a friend or family members house)
Whatever is on your computer hard drive, should also be saved to a second location. Call your WD1TB Drive “Hard Drive A1”. If you want to really do this this right way, you should have a second WD1TB that has the exact same information on it called “Hard Drive A2”. A1 stays in your office and backups every change you make on your computer. A2 can live at a family members house. Every 3-6 months, bring A2 back to your house and update it’s files so it is the same as A1.
With 3 backups, even if 2 drives fail you can replace it easy, and save all of your data. If this is overkill for you, just use A1 to backup your computer, but think about what would happen if you had your computer and A1 in a backpack and a waterbottle leaked in your bag. All gone, just like that! That’s the point of having an offsite backup.
Advanced User:
RAID System (Onsite Backup)
Offsite Storage (Offsite Backup)
Working Drive (Fast Access to working Media)
The premise of this system is the same as the basic, just dealing with more media. The RAID system is designed to be your main backup, as a RAID is designed to have redundancy (multiple drives in case one fails.) You can backup your work media, as well as your computer files to it.
For an offsite Hard Drive, have a traveling drive the same size as your RAID system (or a series of drives), which you can sync with your RAID system every few months.
You don’t want to work off of the RAID because it’s designed for backup and might run slower. The fastest way is to have a separate drive free from the “back up” system called a working drive. Save a copy of your current project to it, and work off of that instead of trying to work off the RAID. If you have a PC, a spare SSD works great as a working drive.
But what about “cloud” storage?
Cloud storage is great, but it can be expensive. Right now 2TB on Dropbox is $15.99/month or $155.88 per year. A 2TB WD Drive is $89.99 at Best Buy. In fact a 4TB WD passport is $129.99 on sale. If each drive lasts around 4 years, then that’s $89.99 for the physical drive, and $640 for cloud storage.
Don’t get me wrong, SOME cloud storage is great. I use 1TB of Microsoft One Drive that comes with my Microsoft 365 subscription (I love me some excel and word) so I can use that to backup my finished photos and films for the year. But keep it to that, the finished files, or working files. Save yourself the money and make a trip to your family to drop off your back up drive every few months.
Some additional words of advice:
Hard Drives WILL fail over time. They have spinning parts which will wear over time. Just get used to this idea, and have a plan in place to deal with it because it’s much easier this way. SSD’s will last longer, but better to have a plan in place then scrambling to deal with a data failure.
Avoid buying odd numbered storage amounts (ex. 3TB). They seem to have a much higher failure rate because of how they are designed.
Most Hard Drives should last around 4 years. After that the failure chances go up so it’s a good number to plan around. Still, check your drives every now and then.
Avoid buying Seagate drives. That’s my experience and advice. They seem to fail at a higher rate then other brands. In 2016 there was a class action lawsuit for excessively high failure rates of their drives. The only drives that I have had fail are Seagate. Avoid the headache.
I recommend Western Digital, G-Tech, SanDisk (crazy, all three of these brands are owned by the same company…). Lexar is also great for memory cards. Samsung and Western Digital have great SSD’s.
Passport drive vs Hard Drive - All I can tell the difference in these drives is size and write speed. I’ve had about the same reliability with both. Unless you’re building a RAID system, in which case you should be using NAS drives, it’s probably not a big difference. I would stick to the passports. Then you avoid needing a dock and power source too.
Whether it’s priceless family photos, or client work that’s yet to be delivered, make sure you take the time to set this up properly. There’s no one answer, but find a system that works for you. I hope this has given you some idea on how to approach the conversation.
In the future we can talk about field backups, the best cloud services, and how to sync drives. :)
